Can Schild win the Overall with her dominance in just one discipline?
In 2001 Janica Kostelic won eight consecutive slalom races to lift the Slalom Globe and with the huge number of points she amassed in slalom, this went a long way to securing the Overall Globe as well. Kostelic scored 824 points in Slalom alone in the 2001 season. Marlies Schild at the moment has 500 for the 2012 season. The one discipline dominance can certainly help in the race for the overall but is the current situation creating a false position?
Schild is certainly dominating the slalom like no one has since Kostelic did in 2001. The margin of victory in each race has been outstanding: In Zagreb 1.40 seconds separated her from Tina Maze in second place; 2.27 from Michaela Kirchgasser in third place – huge margins. And this is not just an isolated incident. In Courchevel the margin was 1.87 over second place!
So how good is Schild? With 32 World Cup wins and closing down on the record of 34 by Vreni Schneider, very good is an understatement. Schneider also won eight races in a row during the 1988 and 1989 seasons (1 in the ‘88 season and then the rest in the ‘89 season.) There are two weeks before the next race scheduled for Maribor but more likely to take place in Kranjska Gora due to snow issues and you can bet that Maze, Hoefl-Riesch and others will be looking to fine hone their slalom to try and close the gap.
Talking after the Zagreb race, Michaela Kirchgasser explained that for the rest of the field to have a chance of winning they “need to ski an almost perfect run and hope that Marlies has on off day.” While Kirchgasser and Maze will head off to Bad Kleinkirchheim to take part in the speed events next week, Schild will be back on her slalom boards and training as hard as ever. She wants the record of most wins and wants the Overall. But can she get it?
It will be hard and the common feeling at the moment is that her position, second in the Overall to Lindsey Vonn, 101 points back, is artificial. Schild has had five races to grab her points in her favoured discipline yet Vonn, a supreme master in two disciplines has had just four races in the speed events. January will see a whole heap of speed events for Vonn to extend her lead in.
With Schild not doing the speed races anymore, this hands the advantage back to Vonn in the race for the Overall. Last year’s winner, Maria Hoefl-Riesch is off the pace and it will require a massive change in fortune for her to retain the crown. Vonn can win in all five events and for Schild the area for points scoring is limited to Slalom with a few bonus points to be won in GS.
When Janica Kostelic won the Overall in 2001, she had sold results across the board apart from downhill, something that changed in later years. Kostelic outscored second place in the slalom by 440 points; Schild currently has a lead of 213 over Maze after five races. It will be extremely hard for Schild to take the lead in the Overall: Vonn is a world cup winner in Slalom and can score good points in the discipline. Schild will not even race in the speed events due to past injuries. Since she won the World title in Garmisch last season, Schild has been much more “relaxed” and this has certainly helped her. After years out injured, the current form is no surprise.
The discipline crystal globe remains the goal for the Austrian and this should also bring the reward of the most victories in the discipline. Can she win the remaining races in the season? No reason to say no but as she acknowledges, “it only takes a small mistake and the race is over.” The fact that she is a slalom specialist and will keep training hard while the others race hard in the other disciplines, means that the chance is there to keep the winning streak going as well as overtaking Schneider.
Schild has been one of the few racers not to sign the protest document against the change in ski design for next year. Why is this? Schild feels that the reduction of the radius is good in reducing the aggressiveness of the skis. Schild has not yet tested the new skis, only the men have, but she has spoken with her fiancée Benni Raich about the skis. Since injuring her knee in the 2008 opening race in Soelden, Schild knows that by not doing the speed races, she will have more time to concentrate on the slalom. “The feeling in my stomach tells me that I should not do the speed races and I am happy with that,” she explained.
The season is long and the pressure will mount on Schild with each race that she wins. There are five Slaloms left in the season. By the end of the season there could be more superlatives credited to her as well as records broken.
